The invention relates to a bearing unit for a gear drive having a drive shaft supported in a drive housing via at least one rolling bearing and a bearing bush receiving the rolling bearing, the bearing bush being axially supported in the drive housing by an axial bearing surface.
A drive shaft of an axle drive of a motor vehicle in an axle housing with two tapered roller bearings arranged in axially spaced relationship to one another is already known from DE 198 08 566 C1. One of the two tapered roller bearings is mounted in the axle housing via a housing insert which is separate from the axle housing. The axle housing is formed from light metal and the housing insert from steel or cast iron.
It is the object of the present invention to provide a bearing bush having a plurality of bearing surfaces for all the rolling bearings of the drive shaft in such a way that the entire bearing arrangement for supporting a shaft can be mounted in a simple way and a displacement of the shaft in the axial direction due to thermal expansion is compensated for.